Create a Great DJ Website, in Minutes

In the landscape of promotion, there are now unlimited sites on which you can place material on about your work as a DJ. So when someone asks “what do you do?”, which link do you send them? Many DJs have signatures that look like library cards with 5 different links to Twitter, Soundcloud, Facebook, Myspace and if they are lucky a custom homepage. Since you can’t possible expect people to visit all of your content sites, why not aggregate all of those sources into one single page that is easy to set up and changes as your DJ world grows? Well, fortunately, someone invented a service that does just that. It’s called: “One Sheet” . Check out mine here, I created it within a few hours, and in the following article we will cover how to create your own.

THE BIG IDEA

One sheet does not really host much content except for a big splashy photo and a bio. All of the “assets” that you would want to share like photos, mixes, tour dates come from other internet services that specialize in managing those services. One sheet simply aggregates all of them into a single web presense that you can link to with a single URL. Upload a new mix or tour date and your “homepage” stays updated without a single shred of effort.

KEY ELEMENTS

If you only were to set up a few services that would provide the core information about your work they should be:

MIXES

One Sheet takes your Soundcloud account and sticks a widget on the front page. Easily resize and move it around the page to suit your taste. I went through and updated my Soundcloud with some new music and old mixes just for the occassion. Now, rather than putting new remixes on my server, its just a simple matter of putting them on Soundcloud.

FACEBOOK

If you have an artist page on Facebook, one page will automatically pull in your photos and wall posts. in this manner, you can use your Facebook page to write updates and post new photos. This info then gets updated in all the places you would like without a lot of fuss.

GIGS

One Sheet syncs with “Bands in town” among other calender apps. This is a nice little app used by Tiesto among others to publish your dates and have people get notifications when you are in town.

VIDEOS

Logically, we are in a video world so you can nice connect one specific YouTube profile and connect it to your one page. This does present one problem however, which I cover in the complaints section below.

COMPLAINTS

After trying to set up one sheet as a viable replacement for my standard “DJ site”, there were two small issues that annoyed me but didnt reach the level of deal breakers:

The Youtube page aggregates all videos from a single YouTube channel, meaning that you may not be able to group the videos of your DJ work that are truly relevant. I would like, for example, to put a single playlist there that is pulling videos from a broad range of channels.

The bio section does not support HTML, so no YouTube embeds or fancy code.

The site does a great job of automatically finding all of your services and syncing them up so connecting things like Facebook only takes a few moments. However, when that “auto” detection breaks you are kind of screwed. For example, my tour dates are managed by “Bands in Town” which is connected to my artist profile but One sheet is looking for it on my personal facebook account and not pulling any dates.

SO WHAT DO YOU THINK?

If you are just starting out and creating a DJ profile, this seems like a great way to go, but we are interested in hearing your perspective. Does it appear professional enough and would it be taken seriously as a single page recourse about your work? This post was in no way an attempt to promote myself as a DJ (I rarely accept gigs due to Dj TT responsibilities) but instead I used my own “online presence” (which has been pitiful lately) as an experiment to see how viable this service is. It’s amazing that I was able to revitalize my online promotion and presence by enabling a few new tools and then combining them all into one page after only a few hours of work.

I have compiled a list of DJ’s personal info from beatport,
online forums and other websites which has 1000+ emails, 7000+ facebook pages,
3000+twitter pages of DJ’s. If interested, please reach me on ernsnowak@yahoo.com

I’ve just built out a platform aimed for DJ/Producers and music industry called The DJ Book http://djbook.co. I’m in early beta testing currently, but it does support subdomain i.e. hello.djbook.co, plus you can use your own domain on the service too.

It is as I said early beta, invite/by request only currently as I’m still testing, but is looking very promising.

Brad

Onesheet isnt taking new members!!! ahhhhhhh, is there something similar out there
?

While Facebook doesn’t quite allow you the same degree of profile
customization that MySpace does you can still tweak the look of your
personal profile and apply some really nice looking Facebook Layouts to your profiles.

“The YouTube page aggregates all videos from a single YouTube channel,
meaning that you may not be able to group the videos of your DJ work
that are truly relevant. I would like, for example, to put a single
playlist there that is pulling videos from a broad range of channels.

Max

Nice idea but needs serious tweaking. I found it didn’t work properly, there are too many bugs and the layout is pretty lame. I’ll check it out again in another 6 months or so…..maybe. Why do they launch these things when they aren’t ready?

Nice idea for a page. Instead of using “OneSheet”, I coded my own and made some tweaks that I feel improved it.

I made the background image scaleable with the browser window, and instead of having gaudy transparent wrappers around elements, I got rid of those and simply put icons for links. The player, icon links, and logo all float as you scale the window.

I achieved all this using only a few lines of code with CSS3 and HTML5.

Chrome, Firefox, and Safari users will see it properly.

Also, the links don’t quite work yet simply because the pages for them don’t exist. Soon though :)

As a Dj and the owner of a boutique design shop that specializes in start up and small business branding, I have a love/hate relationship with ‘out of teh box’ services such as this. On the practical side, I can see why someone with little to no experience in marketing and branding (or budget) would be attracted to such a service. The ease (after the learning curve) to get something up is hard to beat, however one really needs to ask themselves if a ‘generic/template’ solution is what is best for my brand. One thing I often tell my clients when asked about using an out of the box solution is that your service/product/brand is not generic. Should your virtual ‘salesman’ (or woman) be generic? In your absence, your website is a formidable means to communicate who you are, what you do and why you are right for the job.

When people hear ‘custom’ they cringe and start envisioning their bank account depleting in funds. While it is a cost, you should see it as an investment into your brand, one, that if approached intelligently, will more than pay for itself in the long run.

I would find more value in a service that does the opposite – instead of pulling information from various resources into one site (of which you still need to update XX social medium sites with your content) – you update one site and it is pushed to your other social avenues, thus saving you a lot of time.

Just my 2 cents.

TokenAsianGuy

As some people mentioned, I think the “scrolling” issue on your existing site isn’t a great user experience. I also noticed that there’s some redundancy where the videos are posted on the front page, and there’s a separate link to “videos”. When I had my webpage done, my web guy had a lot of useful info about best practices and he mentioned that it should have as minimal scrolling as possible. I also have to say I completely disagree with the comment that the old page is better for mobile. Scrolling is a much worse experience on mobile than on a full size screen. Especially if you have a device with a small screen like a BlackBerry. I also agree that the onesheet page as a whole, has a much better layout than the onesheet page.

The one thing that wasn’t mentioned that’s a HUGE deal for a working mobile DJ like myself, is how onesheet fares in terms of search engine optimization. Does onsheet factor into search results? Can you find it at all without the link? Does it ask for keywords? etc.

I’ve had a few gigs this year from people that have found my webpage from google searches for DJ’s so search results are one of the most important questions for me.

Hey, I’m a long time DJTT reader, this is definatley the best “admin” tip by far!
Having set up a custom website that needed updating, hosting and maybe more importantly time spent on it – onesheet is exactly what we were after in a website – essentially a business card to all our other web content!
1 hour 15 mins and that’s now it!

One slight technical issue from our end, we use the custom domain feature and every alternate time you visit the site, it appears to be down. However, the next time it’s ok again. Assume this would be a url masking thing from our provider (namecheap) but does anyone have any idea’s???

Ken L Jones

just made a sheet- great website! very easy and customizable.. would recommend to anyone.. here’s mine (still under construction) – http://www.onesheet.com/kenLJones/

Anonymous

The best practice is to use blogger and link all your mixes and videos to your blog if you are a bedroom dj.

Jenhenry

podomatic.com is great ! similar but i really like it you can link your podcast to iTunes too….

Beats the shxt out of notepad;) Certainly a step up from http://www.socialnetwork.com/djxyz. Fits square between that, and do it yourself, both of which I’ve done for years between my own + the label. I’ve settled on simple Template based sites, w/enough flexibility to use self updating plugins like SoundCloud.

I’d definitely do this if I didn’t already have the learning curve covered and still might if the covered a few of your valid gripes. Some things I’d really like to see, are abilities to leverage those connections better, and slice and dice the incoming data in new ways. Basically like the difference between google reader and pulse reader. Both aggregators, different feel. Also would like label support, because if I’m already doing the label, I don’t need another deal to manage. Nice article…

Anonymous

Beats the shxt out of notepad;) Certainly a step up from http://www.socialnetwork.com/djxyz. Fits square between that, and do it yourself, both of which I’ve done for years between my own + the label. I’ve settled on simple Template based sites, w/enough flexibility to use self updating plugins like SoundCloud.

I’d definitely do this if I didn’t already have the learning curve covered and still might if the covered a few of your valid gripes. Some things I’d really like to see, are abilities to leverage those connections better, and slice and dice the incoming data in new ways. Basically like the difference between google reader and pulse reader. Both aggregators, different feel. Also would like label support, because if I’m already doing the label, I don’t need another deal to manage. Nice article…

Dj

you run the risk of losing your search engine rankings as your own site now has little or no content. Which will drop you like a stone.

So searching for you will still make the users go via facebook, twitter, etc… and they still may not be able your main site.

Dj

you run the risk of losing your search engine rankings as your own site now has little or no content. Which will drop you like a stone.

So searching for you will still make the users go via facebook, twitter, etc… and they still may not be able your main site.

Daybreaker

Wish that it had a Mixcloud widget like Soundcloud. I prefer Mixcloud much more. Other than that I really don’t see anything too special about it.

Daybreaker

Wish that it had a Mixcloud widget like Soundcloud. I prefer Mixcloud much more. Other than that I really don’t see anything too special about it.

A lot of the things you guys are asking for are coming to Onesheet. My goal with it is to make it easy for a band to set up a simple web presence. It wont solve all the needs of every artist wanting every conceivable customization, but hopefully it’ll help artists get an attractive web presence built with little time and effort.

A lot of the main issues are being resolved now. We added the ability to hide the social network icons from the navigation bar today. We’re going to be releasing a way to hide the whole Onesheet bar completely soon. And artists can forward their domains to hide Onesheet in the URL.

A lot of the things you guys are asking for are coming to Onesheet. My goal with it is to make it easy for a band to set up a simple web presence. It wont solve all the needs of every artist wanting every conceivable customization, but hopefully it’ll help artists get an attractive web presence built with little time and effort.

A lot of the main issues are being resolved now. We added the ability to hide the social network icons from the navigation bar today. We’re going to be releasing a way to hide the whole Onesheet bar completely soon. And artists can forward their domains to hide Onesheet in the URL.

Keep the feedback coming! I love it!

Brenden
Creator of Onesheet

Anonymous

Hey Brenden,

Nice you are listening to your (prospective) customers too. That builds confidence.:)

scamo

Anonymous

Hey Brenden,

Nice you are listening to your (prospective) customers too. That builds confidence.:)

Send an email to info at onesheet.com if you have some time. I’d LOVE some info on what you thought was too much clicking, etc… Really want to make this simple for users and could use all the feedback I can get :)

Send an email to info at onesheet.com if you have some time. I’d LOVE some info on what you thought was too much clicking, etc… Really want to make this simple for users and could use all the feedback I can get :)

So after a few minutes working out some bugs and whipping something up in photoshop I’m pleased with what I came up with. It’s exactly what I wanted, an aggregate for my other services. no maintenance = WIN. http://www.onesheet.com/djsilkwolf/

So after a few minutes working out some bugs and whipping something up in photoshop I’m pleased with what I came up with. It’s exactly what I wanted, an aggregate for my other services. no maintenance = WIN. http://www.onesheet.com/djsilkwolf/

John Matrix

flavors.me is very similar, yet better integrated with all the widgets.

John Matrix

flavors.me is very similar, yet better integrated with all the widgets.

I like the layout and navigation of onesheet much better than your site, but it is far from ideal or a pleasure to travel through. I loathe windows popping up unless that is the specific content I am interested in. The feel of onesheet is cheap, especially with their logo pasted on the top of the page. The feel of your site is interesting and professional, until you realize how much scrolling is involved, then it feels like a blog which I promptly scan and leave as opposed to exploring more.

Taking cost into account onesheet blows the competition (professional web designers) out of the water. It will probably be great for local and aspiring DJs and bands, but for more accomplished artists a personal web site creates a professional air (whether it is deserved or not). People are more likely to recognize your devotion to the music/technology if you have a well though out personalized web site. Any respectable web designer should be able to aggregate all the information you need and make it auto-update, but it could cost you a pretty penny.

This article did give me some good ideas for updating my website http://www.brodyisms.com The redesign is already under construction, but it could take awhile to finish, another downside to coding it yourself or hiring a designer.

Brody

I like the layout and navigation of onesheet much better than your site, but it is far from ideal or a pleasure to travel through. I loathe windows popping up unless that is the specific content I am interested in. The feel of onesheet is cheap, especially with their logo pasted on the top of the page. The feel of your site is interesting and professional, until you realize how much scrolling is involved, then it feels like a blog which I promptly scan and leave as opposed to exploring more.

Taking cost into account onesheet blows the competition (professional web designers) out of the water. It will probably be great for local and aspiring DJs and bands, but for more accomplished artists a personal web site creates a professional air (whether it is deserved or not). People are more likely to recognize your devotion to the music/technology if you have a well though out personalized web site. Any respectable web designer should be able to aggregate all the information you need and make it auto-update, but it could cost you a pretty penny.

This article did give me some good ideas for updating my website http://www.brodyisms.com The redesign is already under construction, but it could take awhile to finish, another downside to coding it yourself or hiring a designer.

Adam

has anyone looked at about.me or flavor.me ? it seems they offer exactly the same functionality and appear to be better designed.

Adam

has anyone looked at about.me or flavor.me ? it seems they offer exactly the same functionality and appear to be better designed.

There’s a load of other aggregation services that I have come across such as flavors.me and about.me (my favourites) and they are quickly being updated to host all kinds of different media and content, so would be worth having a look at these too!

There’s a load of other aggregation services that I have come across such as flavors.me and about.me (my favourites) and they are quickly being updated to host all kinds of different media and content, so would be worth having a look at these too!

I love the idea, hate how it’s executed. Having Facebook and other icons like that, like so many others said, it’s too generic and boring. If they really wanted to make it interesting, they should have provided different layouts, styles, step AWAY from all those brands and make it look like an actual website, rather than just another social network profile page.

In my opinion WordPress still rules the world when it comes to these things and you really don’t need a big budget, just buy a domain, get yourself a proper URL and email address and if you really want to make it original, ask around for one of the billions of aspiring webdesign / graphic design students who want something to challenge them.

Personally, I went wordpress style, used my knowledge of Photoshop and 10 year old HTML skills, and a lot of guessing to produce my website: http://www.LQP.se

I love the idea, hate how it’s executed. Having Facebook and other icons like that, like so many others said, it’s too generic and boring. If they really wanted to make it interesting, they should have provided different layouts, styles, step AWAY from all those brands and make it look like an actual website, rather than just another social network profile page.

In my opinion WordPress still rules the world when it comes to these things and you really don’t need a big budget, just buy a domain, get yourself a proper URL and email address and if you really want to make it original, ask around for one of the billions of aspiring webdesign / graphic design students who want something to challenge them.

Personally, I went wordpress style, used my knowledge of Photoshop and 10 year old HTML skills, and a lot of guessing to produce my website: http://www.LQP.se

I think this is a internet explorer bug, and we’re working on it. Is that the browser you are seeing this happening in?

Djjez

Great site for two hours work, but the soundclout app cuts in over all ather windows – which looks a bit crap.

catraxx

Like the old one better, it seems ba FAR more personalised. Having somebody eles name in your url is never a good thing and finally all this social networking stuff is getting really, really old to me. Call me old fashioned, but i prefer a solidly coded custom website that fully fits your needs.

catraxx

Like the old one better, it seems ba FAR more personalised. Having somebody eles name in your url is never a good thing and finally all this social networking stuff is getting really, really old to me. Call me old fashioned, but i prefer a solidly coded custom website that fully fits your needs.

Calgarc

same here, nothing does for me like wordpress a domain and good ol css

Calgarc

same here, nothing does for me like wordpress a domain and good ol css

Anonymous

same here, nothing does it for me like wordpress a domain and good ol css

Anonymous

same here, nothing does it for me like wordpress a domain and good ol css

Anonymous

same here, nothing does for me like wordpress a domain and good ol css

Anonymous

same here, nothing does for me like wordpress a domain and good ol css

Dj Villanus

Really good points. Nothing beats professional work in the long run. Although, it’s a bit soon to refer to a coded custom website as old fashioned. That’s like saying, “call me old fashioned, but I prefer a plumber come install this new sink I bought.” There is a since of pride that comes from accomplishing something on your own that money or assistance don’t produce.

catraxx

True, but with all the bazillions of precoded solutions plus the social networking it almost feels old school to fire up a text editor and code from scratch like i usually do :P

Dj Villanus

Really good points. Nothing beats professional work in the long run. Although, it’s a bit soon to refer to a coded custom website as old fashioned. That’s like saying, “call me old fashioned, but I prefer a plumber come install this new sink I bought.” There is a since of pride that comes from accomplishing something on your own that money or assistance don’t produce.

Yeah One Sheet looks like the same kind of service that “about.me” offers. Nice splash-page-online-business-card, but these services are definitely never going to be able to replace a real, customisable website.

And if you’re looking for a cool YouTube playlist app, which let’s you collate your YouTube playlists or channels in a small 500×500 area, check out Embedr. There’s an example here for my local cricket team: http://embedr.com/playlist/my-video-playlist_21485

Yeah One Sheet looks like the same kind of service that “about.me” offers. Nice splash-page-online-business-card, but these services are definitely never going to be able to replace a real, customisable website.

And if you’re looking for a cool YouTube playlist app, which let’s you collate your YouTube playlists or channels in a small 500×500 area, check out Embedr. There’s an example here for my local cricket team: http://embedr.com/playlist/my-video-playlist_21485

So far I’m finding it a little bit buggy to get started in, although I’m optimistic about the idea since I noticed it is made by the same person who founded Artist Data (now property of SonicBids). Looking forward to using this once I can get the background designed properly.

So far I’m finding it a little bit buggy to get started in, although I’m optimistic about the idea since I noticed it is made by the same person who founded Artist Data (now property of SonicBids). Looking forward to using this once I can get the background designed properly.

Anonymous

Um, deal breakers for me.

“One Sheet” pasted at the top with their social networking links. It makes it “social network” bloated and actually disorienting at first glance. My first impression would have been “Where am I?” and “What should I be clicking?”
One sheet in the URL. Not really good for a serious business card, just like the email address from google mail.

If One Sheet had a premium service, where all that goes away, it might be interesting. I’d also not consider it to be my homepage, but might actually want to embed their service into my site to use the update services they are offering. However, if you actually have the money or the knowledge to get your own web site, then you can actually embed the social networking sites into it yourself and get the automatic updating without One Sheet. So, I’d say, it is good for beginners or people on smaller budgets, but doesn’t really cut it for a truely professional web presentation.

The newer site on One Sheet (to me) looks better. I like the old site but Tainted is right: I hate scrolling through an entire site to find what I want – Just give me the goods with a few key subtitles. As a young DJ with little time or cash (balancing my education, DJ career, and other priorities) having One Sheet that would pull together all my relevant information at the touch of a finger tip is REALLY nice. The fact that it costs very little (for, time IS money) is a BIG BIG plus, to me. I use a service that allows me to host my professional site that works but charges me annually. The fact that One Sheet is FREE, EASY to navigate, pulls MOST of my relevant DJ information, and I does not require me to write HTML code are all the right selling points for me.

Although, as Ean Golden complains (and I completely agree with Golden) I want the option to embed different YouTube channels, I want my Twitter AND Facebook timeline somewhere visible for my clients to see, and I want that “auto detect” error worked out before I even think about switching.

The bottom line here is: Despite one service being FREE, if it does not meet the need of the consumer (me) then it is clearly irrelevant. I want to see these errors fixed soon.

The newer site on One Sheet (to me) looks better. I like the old site but Tainted is right: I hate scrolling through an entire site to find what I want – Just give me the goods with a few key subtitles. As a young DJ with little time or cash (balancing my education, DJ career, and other priorities) having One Sheet that would pull together all my relevant information at the touch of a finger tip is REALLY nice. The fact that it costs very little (for, time IS money) is a BIG BIG plus, to me. I use a service that allows me to host my professional site that works but charges me annually. The fact that One Sheet is FREE, EASY to navigate, pulls MOST of my relevant DJ information, and I does not require me to write HTML code are all the right selling points for me.

Although, as Ean Golden complains (and I completely agree with Golden) I want the option to embed different YouTube channels, I want my Twitter AND Facebook timeline somewhere visible for my clients to see, and I want that “auto detect” error worked out before I even think about switching.

The bottom line here is: Despite one service being FREE, if it does not meet the need of the consumer (me) then it is clearly irrelevant. I want to see these errors fixed soon.

Tainted

I hate giant pages that I need to scroll down, and I hate long blog lists that I have to sift through to find the videos/information/posts I want. Aggregate it. Give everything a few key subtitles, and let me get to what I want and get out fast. So yeah, the new site looks how a current page should look.

Sure, it looks a little “generic” as Kraal said, but the idea is spot on. A bit more customization you’ll be… golden.Oh, this stuff writes itself.

DSC

I will scroll forever if the content is interesting.

DSC

I will scroll forever if the content is interesting.

Tainted

I hate giant pages that I need to scroll down, and I hate long blog lists that I have to sift through to find the videos/information/posts I want. Aggregate it. Give everything a few key subtitles, and let me get to what I want and get out fast. So yeah, the new site looks how a current page should look.

Sure, it looks a little “generic” as Kraal said, but the idea is spot on. A bit more customization you’ll be… golden.Oh, this stuff writes itself.

Kraal

i like your old one much better… more personality. The new one reminds me of those business cards that you can get 1000 for 19.99 and the provide the generic design for you

Felipe Dornelas

Isn’t any DJ website a business card?

Felipe Dornelas

Isn’t any DJ website a business card?

Kraal

i like your old one much better… more personality. The new one reminds me of those business cards that you can get 1000 for 19.99 and the provide the generic design for you

Looks cool I guess. I see that when you try to share the site on facebook that it doesn’t give you a customizable photo. Also I couldn’t tell at first glance if you customize the url. That’s easily fixed with a redirect. Cool in theory. reminds me of an about.me page for artists.

Looks cool I guess. I see that when you try to share the site on facebook that it doesn’t give you a customizable photo. Also I couldn’t tell at first glance if you customize the url. That’s easily fixed with a redirect. Cool in theory. reminds me of an about.me page for artists.

Wala

Great find! Love the new layout of your website as well. Working on making mine as well!

Wala

Great find! Love the new layout of your website as well. Working on making mine as well!